Moyra Caldecott (2 page)

He shuddered, remembering the eyes of the Seer he had killed when she had told him he would have victory and yet no victory. She had spoken in riddles of a man who would come bearing no spear, no sword and no axe, who would rise again when he was killed.

He raised his fist and shook it at the sky.

‘I vowed by Thunor’s silver ring I would defeat the upstart god who challenges him,’ he shouted into the wind. ‘I, wielder of Thunor’s avenging hammer, wearer of his belt of power and his iron gloves, swear again by the true gods, I will destroy the heathen Christ!’

The sky was ripped open by a deadly blade of lightning and his god spoke to him in the thunder.

In the cave, Etheldreda, sleepless through the night, clutched her sister’s skirt, watching the lightning flicker through the branches over the entrance, weirdly illuminating the figure of the idol. She heard the thunder and then the heavy hushing of the rain.

The youth slept soundly and seemed unaware of the storm. Saxberga slipped fitfully into a heavy state that was at times more unconsciousness than sleep. Etheldreda alone kept vigil, trembling and afraid. All the order she had known and taken for granted was gone, and it was as though she were in the swirling dark and chaos of the first Creation. Within her she fought the fear of the void, the fear of becoming nothing.

As the lightning flashed she caught the eye of the stone god, and almost screamed aloud with the shock of feeling that it was watching her. It seemed so real she cried out to it for help. But in the next flash of lightning she saw the god’s eyes were hollow and sightless, his ears of stone. He could not see her plight, nor hear her prayer. There was no one in the cave besides herself, her sister and the youth.

Near dawn she crept out of the cave. Saxberga was lying fast asleep on the young man’s straw and fur, her leg firmly and skilfully bound. The youth himself was hunched against the far wall, snoring.

The rain had stopped, but drops of water were still dripping from the canopy of leaves. At first it was quite dark but every moment it was lightening. And so were her thoughts. She could hardly believe that the dark horrors of the day before had really happened and she began to feel that it would not be difficult to find a way out of the wood and back to her family and friends. Surely there would be a village nearby where she would be able to find a horse for Saxberga to ride. She set off at once to look for one.

She had not gone far when she smelled burning and saw smoke through the trees. She began to run, joyfully sure that she would now soon be among friendly people cooking their breakfast. But something made her cautious, perhaps something she had only just learned. She slowed down and kept under cover, approaching carefully. The wood suddenly gave way to a large clearing.

She stood transfixed, staring at the scene, as though she were above the world looking down. The fire was no hearth fire as she had hoped, but the smouldering remains of a village and, lying among the charred wood of the fallen house beams, were the mutilated bodies of the villagers. The child clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. She wanted to run, but she found she could not.

Suddenly Etheldreda felt a hand seize her shoulder and her heart jerked painfully. She felt herself pulled backwards and terror seemed to break over her like a dark and icy wave. She twisted her head and then, sick with relief, she recognised the youth who had taken her sister and her to the cave.

Her legs gave way as he lifted her in his arms. He ran with her as swift and sure as a wild animal through the woods, scarcely cracking a stick underfoot.

She put her arms around his neck and clung. She felt she had known him all her life. He had become father and mother and home and security, light and warmth and sleep. Tears poured from her eyes and ran down his neck.

He did not stop until he was outside the cave and then he lowered her to the ground. He pulled aside the branches and pushed her roughly under them. The lamp was not lit, but the light of dawn had penetrated a little and she could see Saxberga sitting bolt upright reaching out her arms to her. She fell into them sobbing.

She was aware of being scolded, of being closely held, of alternate sisterly endearments and angry accusations – but she could not stop sobbing.

Saxberga demanded to know what had happened, but Etheldreda could not tell her.

The older girl looked over her head at the youth sitting on his haunches trimming pieces of meat from the deer with his belt knife, the small hearth fire comfortably blazing. But his face was totally absorbed in what he was doing.

The early light that crept into the cave where the two princesses were hiding brought no comfort to the thousands of men behind King Egric’s last defensive dyke. Tensely they waited, crouched in the cold dawn air praying to their god, the ramps taken, the wooden bridges dismantled. All night they had watched the storm and wondered what it presaged. It had doused the enemies’ fires: if only it would douse their battle spirit. Some had thought they heard the fierce ride of the women of death and had said goodbye to the fair world in their hearts, but others had seen the anger of Christ’s father against the heathen in the lashing of the storm and had stubbornly clung to hope.

By the time the grey dawn came, the storm had passed though the sky still hung close to the earth, heavy and swollen with dark drops of rain.

Lying along the ridge of the dyke the East Anglian look-outs saw the earth move, its black mantle creeping forward towards them. Some made the sign of the cross, others reached for amulets of the old gods. None thought that they would live to see the sun set that day.

Penda, the plunder-lord on his great war-horse, rode ahead with his picked men, the most feared fighting warriors of his whole force, men whose blood-curdling screams in battle were said to melt men’s minds and burst their hearts before even a blow were struck. He gripped his spear. It had lain on Thunor’s iron altar and would be guided with supernatural accuracy to its mark.

His eyes glinted under his beetling brows. This is what he lived for: the moment before a battle when everything depended on his signal to strike. At such a moment he felt himself possessed by his god. Penda stopped just outside arrow range and raised his spear arm. The whole vast body of men froze where they were, the silence stretched so taut a lark’s call would have shattered it.

And then, suddenly, an incredible thing happened. A man emerged from the great ditch in front of the ridge and started walking calmly forward towards Penda.

Penda frowned. This was not as it should be. Straining, he tried to see more clearly in the dim light. The figure approached steadily, head up, shoulders squared, purposive and authoritative. But as he came nearer Penda saw that he was unarmed and he remembered the Seer’s words: ‘No spear. No sword. No axe.’ A chill came to the Mercian’s heart. This had been foretold. This was his adversary.

Sigbert, the King who had given up his kingdom to become a monk, came near enough to look into Penda’s eyes and, as men’s lives and the fate of kingdoms hung in the balance of that tense and silent dawn, the two men faced each other, each a formidable warrior, each fighting a different war.

Penda forgot the waiting men, the blood shadow that hung above the landscape, the women of death that rode at his heels, the hounds that hunted. It was as though everything in the world had ceased to exist except this one man, and this man, though he uttered not a word, was asking him a question.

‘What am I doing here?’ he found himself thinking. ‘Why do I want to kill these people?’

But even as he struggled for the answer an arrow came whining through the air and fell at the end of its reach just ahead of him. The spell was broken. So it had been only a trick to distract him!

He threw his spear with all his strength into the breast of the sorcerer who had made him look into his own heart. With a high and fearsome scream his men rushed forward, their arrows and their spears falling like deadly rain upon the defenders of the dyke.

It was at Prince Ethelhere’s command that the arrow had been loosed, and it was Prince Ethelhere, brother to King Egric, who shouted commands and led the defence.

With tears in his eyes King Egric knew that they had lost, but might not, had his cousin, Sigbert, been allowed to live. He remembered how they had taken him away from the peaceful fields he was ploughing and demanded that he lead them into battle. His reputation as a warrior before he gave up the world to become a monk was so formidable that they knew the people would have no fear of Penda if he were at their head. Egric could hear Ethelhere’s haughty voice even now.

‘Have you heard no rumours of the war, sir, in this remote place?’

And Egric could hear Sigbert’s reply.

‘There is always war in the souls of men.’

Ethelhere scowled. ‘Real war, sir!’ he snapped. ‘Penda of Mercia attacks our country and kills our women and children! We come to demand that you help us to defend our land – your land!’

‘Your land? My land?’ Sigbert said quietly. ‘Is it not God’s land?’

It was he, Egric, who then spoke up.

‘It is God’s land, my cousin, but He has given it to us to work in His name and to defend against His enemies.’

‘How can His children be His enemies?’

‘Penda’s wolves are not God’s children,’ one of Egric’s thegns shouted angrily. ‘They are heathen and mock Him with their idols and their blasphemous ways.’

‘A man standing in a field at night looks up and sees the moon caught in the branches of a tree. If he is wise he will know this cannot be, because the moon is immeasurably higher than the tree. It only seems as though it is caught, because he is standing where he is.’

‘What has this to do with us?’ Ethelhere said impatiently.

‘The heathen are children of our God, no less than we, but we have learned that the moon cannot be caught in the tree.’

The men looked puzzled, but Egric had understood, and wished that there was more time to discuss these deep matters with his cousin.

‘Enough!’ Ethelhere growled. ‘While we stand and play with words, Penda marches and kills our people. We must ride against him, and when we ride, you must be at our head!’

‘I will not ride to war,’ Sigbert said firmly. ‘I have no right to say who will live and who will die.’

‘You will let your people be killed?’

‘Each man is answerable for himself at the throne of God.’

‘I see we have wasted our journey,’ Ethelhere said bitterly. ‘The Lord Sigbert will not help us. He is content to hide in safety and watch his people die.’

Sigbert looked around the table at the disappointed and hostile faces. Only Egric chose not to meet his eye.

‘I will come with you,’ Sigbert said. ‘I will come to meet Penda. But I will not fight him with weapons, but with the power of the Lord’s spirit within me.’

‘You are insane!’ Ethelhere muttered in disbelief.

Egric raised his head, a glimmering of hope in his eyes. Then Ethelhere took a deep breath and thought hard. He knew that with Sigbert there the men would fight, no matter if he wielded sword himself or not.

‘Come and use what weapons you will,’ the prince said at last, ‘but come before it is too late.’

After Sigbert’s death, Egric had tried to fight, but he knew he was not a fighting man, and his heart was soon stopped with iron. On seeing both Sigbert and Egric fall, the men turned to run and no amount of shouting and commanding on Ethelhere’s part would make them stay and face the Mercians. Penda’s hordes poured unchecked into the ditch and up the other side, and Ethelhere was forced to flee with the rest.

Penda was almost sorry the victory had been so easy.

He rode back to where the mysterious sorcerer had stood, still haunted by the words of the Seer: ‘No spear. No sword. No axe’, and the memory of how he had felt with the man’s eyes boring into his, how he had momentarily wondered whether he had a right to take men’s lives.

Sigbert’s body had been beaten into the ground under the charge of men and horses. There was very little left of it to rise again. Penda was satisfied that this part at least of the Seer’s vision was false.

That night, installed as conqueror in the great hall at Exning, Penda called for a prisoner to be brought before him.

‘One who was at the dyke,’ he commanded.

This order was not easy to obey. The Mercians on the whole did not take prisoners and it was some time before a boy was found who had escaped killing.

He was flung at Penda’s feet.

‘You saw the sorcerer who came to trick me?’ Penda growled. The boy looked bewildered and was kicked.

‘The man who came out unarmed before the battle.’

In dumb terror the boy nodded.

‘Who was he?’

The boy was silent, struggling to think how best to stay alive. He was kicked again.

‘Who was he?’ shouted Penda, his eyes of fire boring into the young lad’s dimming ones.

The boy muttered something.

‘What was that?’

Penda gestured impatiently for the guards to bring the prisoner nearer to him.

‘Well, who was he?’

‘Our king,’ the lad said, and even as he said it he seemed to gain courage.

‘That is a lie,’ Penda snarled and nodded brusquely at one of his men. He left the tent and returned with Egric’s head and flung it before the lad.

The boy tried not to gag.

‘That… that is the new king,’ he sobbed. ‘King Sigbert gave up being king to… to become a monk.’

Penda, who had clawed his way up to kingship, its power being more important to him than anything else on earth, confronted the image of a man who had had that power, and given it away.

‘You mean he gave up being king to become a priest?’ he said disbelievingly.

The boy nodded. He wished he could remember a prayer he had once learned, to keep him from the harm of demons. Penda was surely demon-driven with those dark and restless eyes, those beetling brows, those knotted muscular hands closing and unclosing on the hilt of the dagger in his belt.

‘Your priests, are they richer and more powerful than the King?’ Penda demanded, still trying to understand a man who would give up being king to be a priest. If he must be priest, could he not have been both?